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A new survey conducted by Morgan Stanley reveals that streaming giant Netflix is “blowing competition out of the water” thanks to original content and a raft of new titles. Stephan Paterno, founder of the world’s first online film finance marketplace, Slated, says HBO, Hulu, and Disney need to find new ways to attract top talent.

“Netflix is well-positioned to dominate across the entire board, discovering fresh shows that will attract and maintain viewers,” says Paternot, CEO of Slated. “We now know that original content is king, so it’s time for all platforms to start creating.”

According to Variety, which first reported the findings of the poll earlier this week, roughly 40% of consumers surveyed said that Netflix is the top streaming outlet with the next highest, HBO, scoring 11%, down from 14% in last year’s equivalent survey. With the conclusion of HBO’s Game of Thrones series, industry insiders believe this raises serious questions about the ability of such organizations to maintain or grow market share.

The survey also revealed that Hulu has “the best original programming”, up from 4% last year, while 5% of respondents said that Amazon Prime holds that mantle, followed by 2% for each of Showtime and Starz.

Interestingly, the survey suggests that Hulu is likely more the cause of consumers ‘cutting the cord’ than Netflix, due to its available streaming package which can replace cable or satellite TV. Morgan Stanley revealed that one third of Hulu subscribers claimed not to have traditional pay TV, as opposed to 27% of Netflix customers.

Moderator

Netflix and Prime are both great. I still generally watch more on Netflix, but I’m using Prime more lately. I love Netflix original series, but I’m also finding more original stuff on Amazon too. It’s an embarrassment of riches!

Moderator

I can’t figure out this line in the write up:
The survey also revealed that Hulu has “the best original programming”, up from 4% last year, while 5% of respondents said that Amazon Prime holds that mantle, followed by 2% for each of Showtime and Starz.

I think there a statistic missing. Should it read:
The survey also revealed that 2% said Hulu has “the best original programming”, up from 4% last year, while 5% of respondents said that Amazon Prime holds that mantle, followed by 2% for each of Showtime and Starz.

I still have major issues getting Prime to play nicely through my AppleTV with my AVR - it always drifts in and out of sync. It is the only app on my AppleTV that this happens with - never have an issue with any other device or service. Which means that I can only use it on my TV with the TV speakers only. Since that’s not how I like to watch movies, I never look there anymore.

Sort of the same thing happening in a lot of industries and a lot of areas - the rich get richer while everyone else has to figure out how to make due with less. And I fear these production groups and crew and talent are stuck in a vicious race to the bottom cycle, because audiences in general believe less and less in paying for the media content they consume and believe this type of content should be free or virtually free.

If you haven’t, you should try a factory reset of the aTV and reinstall the apps, make sure they’re all updated. Your experience isn’t normal. Maybe even try to get a replacement or loaner aTV to see if it’s the device.

Executive Producer

It’s happened to me on two APTV boxes in a row, both the older model and now the 4K model. It’s only the Amazon Prime app and it’s not every bit of content on there. It’s unpredictable and inconsistent. The best I can figure is that there is something in the encoding of some of the files from Amazon’s end that isn’t playing nicely with something in my Onkyo receiver. No problems whatsoever when the receiver is off and just passing the signal to my TV’s speakers.

If we lived in a world with only three channels, or one where Amazon produced something exclusively that was “can’t miss” for me, I’d care more about a fix. At this point, with all of the services and all of the content that I already don’t have time for, I just move on to the next thing.

Executive Producer

I still have major issues getting Prime to play nicely through my AppleTV with my AVR - it always drifts in and out of sync. It is the only app on my AppleTV that this happens with - never have an issue with any other device or service. Which means that I can only use it on my TV with the TV speakers only. Since that’s not how I like to watch movies, I never look there anymore.

I have that same issue with the NHL app on my Apple TV 4K -- the audio drifts out of sync during the telecast of a game. The NHL's streaming service has lots of issues across many platforms, though, so I blame this one on the service and not the hardware platform.

I don't have your sync issues with Amazon Prime, but there is definitely some flakiness with Prime on ATV4K. I could not get all the 4K/UHD episodes of The Boys to play on Prime via the device -- I had to watch the final three episodes via my Roku Ultra.

It's ridiculous needing two different streaming hardware platforms in order to get all content to play properly, but that's where we are at right now in the Wonderful World of Streaming.

Director

I haven't had sync problems with the Prime app on the AppleTV 4K, but there is definitely something wonky going on with it. When The Boys premiered on Prime, I tried to watch the first episode. I used the UHD/4K tab for the show (one has to be careful with Prime to choose the right version of the show you want to see if there are multiple variations of it on the service), but it didn't flag the HDR overlay on my OLED. I immediately closed it and went to the Prime app on my OLED. HDR popped right up as the show began. It also popped up on my FireStick 4K when I watched episodes through that device.

I had used the AppleTV 4K to watch the latest seasons of Bosch, The Man in the High Castle, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, so it USED to work, but none of those flagged HDR any more. And Jack Ryan didn't flag Dolby Vision through the ATV4K. Many complaints to Apple and Amazon caused some of the app's functionality to be repaired, but it's still not completely right.

Director

When I need to fast forward or rewind, the time elapsed bar moves forward or backward, but the actual picture doesn't keep up. Unless I've memorized the timestamp I want to go back to, it's a trial and error process. I love the Netflix/Hulu interface, where you flip through screenshots to jump forward or backward.

When a TV episode or movie ends, it only gives you 4 seconds to choose to view the credits before automatically jumping to the next thing. Netflix is also pretty bad in this area. Hulu goes too far to the other extreme.

The one upside to Prime Video not automatically selecting the streaming quality based on the current internet speed is that I don't get the hops between video quality that I sometimes do in Netflix. I hate when I'm watching something and it suddenly drops to SD quality for a few seconds before rebounding. With Prime, it's the selected quality the whole way through.